br>Edited to add: Changing my mind. You can get a mono Nagra for a couple hundred bucks, if I want to do this I should save some more money and get a really good deck, not a cheap one.

I'm picking up a 60's Japanese compact reel to reel deck this week. It's a cheap one with 5" reels, it looks like, and I believe it's mono.

Should be fun. First project will be to record a couple of loops of something or other.

Next, some drum loops.

What would you do? br> br>

br>ersatzplanet

br>One of the first thing I do is look and see if there is a 50~/60~ switch on the back. If there is not, then that means the capstan motor is DC. Then you can pop it open and find the two trimpots that set the fast and slow speeds (they are typically marked and painted to not move). With a little DIY action, you can add a switch to one of these (I use the fast speed) to select an external pot instead (just match the value), and then you have vary-speed. I have done this to many Sony decks and you can manually change the speed from slightly faster than the fast speed, to dead stop (which you don't want to do for long). Fun stuff for echoes and pitch shifted playback without digital artifacts (although at some points you will start to hear the ultra high frequency bias oscillator). br> br>

br>notmiserlouagain

br>Check out the Uher Report models, they are old, but really sturdy and built to last, almost as good sounding as really good ones, and you (still) get them for cheap. Buy three, for parts. If the word Monitor is added to the model name they have a three-head assembly. Mono and stereo available. br> br>

br>felixer

br>

notmiserlouagain wrote:

Check out the Uher Report models, they are old, but really sturdy and built to last, almost as good sounding as really good ones, and you (still) get them for cheap. Buy three, for parts. If the word Monitor is added to the model name they have a three-head assembly. Mono and stereo available.

yeah, uher reports rule! 4 speeds so ideal for experiments. there is a large usercommunity (at least in germany) so there are spareparts and tips to be had quite easily. the company went bust a long time ago but that doesn't matter much.
although a nagra is the better machine. but watch out: the series 3 uses gremanium transitors. hence noisier. and the firm stopped supporting those, so no spareparts anymore from them. the series 4 is still supported and a good one is still a very nice machine. i would go for a stereo version though ...
and make sure you get all the cables as the connectors are weird and cost a lot. also try and get a psu. the originals ran mostly on batteries (it was built for locationwork) and more often then not that batterycompartment is dirty/broken due to leaking batteries.
have fun! br> br>